Re: Micro ATX 486 - what's the degree of interest?

Posted on 2020-08-28, 16:16

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nitroraptor53, the goal is to use new parts, right? Similar to what dionb pointed out back in March, there are two separate lots of new Elan SC520 CPUs right now on eBay - one of 100 pcs for $1000 ($10/cpu), and another 67 pcs for $599 ($8.94/cpu). In my experience, eBay sellers of new-old stock …

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Re: FastDoom 0.4. A new Doom port for DOS, optimized to be as fast as possible for 386/486 personal computers!

Posted on 2020-08-25, 20:22

by

by LightStruk

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Looking at that video, one curious thing to me is that the vertical strips of sprites are not all the same width. Some are 1 pixel wide, some are 2, and some appear to be 3. Not an expert on the Doom engine myself, but don't the spans also need to be rendered at original quality, not just the …

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Re: FastDoom 0.4. A new Doom port for DOS, optimized to be as fast as possible for 386/486 personal computers!

Posted on 2020-08-25, 15:13

by

by LightStruk

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

As a quality-of-life improvement, is there a way to render enemies and items at a higher quality than the walls? At potato quality, enemies (particularly when somewhat far away) can see the player and attack, but the player can't fight back because the enemy is indistinguishable from the environment …

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Re: Discussion of 64-bit PCI vs. PCI-X. Confusion abounds!

Posted on 2020-08-05, 15:46

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Here's what I've learned in the past few days, PLEASE correct anything incorrect and offer additional information. There isn't a lot to go on. - 66mhz versions were only 3.3 volt, 33mhz versions were either 5v or 3.3v (though I cannot currently find evidence of 33mhz 3.3v slots) I am the …

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Re: Analog composite video output on PCs - how do 70 Hz modes even work?

Posted on 2020-07-31, 18:58

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Thank you, Tildo! That comprehensively answers my question.

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Re: Analog composite video output on PCs - how do 70 Hz modes even work?

Posted on 2020-07-31, 17:13

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

So it's clear that folks here know a lot about colors, which is awesome and informative. That said, does anyone have a VGA card (or better) with composite or S-Video output that they can connect to a TV to see what happens in mode 13h (320x200x8bpp@70 Hz) and 80x25 text mode? Is it still interlaced? …

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Re: Analog composite video output on PCs - how do 70 Hz modes even work?

Posted on 2020-07-31, 12:17

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Also, TTL RGB is pretty much the same as analog RGB. Simply put, TTL RGB is a subset of analog RGB. I wonder if the RGB primaries are the same between a CGA / RGBI monitor and an NTSC TV. (For example, NTSC, PAL, and ATSC all have different RGB primaries - their colorspaces are not identical.) …

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Re: Analog composite video output on PCs - how do 70 Hz modes even work?

Posted on 2020-07-31, 01:53

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I mean, the CGA monitor is essentially nothing more than a glorified US TV set without a tuner, but a pass-through to the RGB tubes. Uh, is it though? CGA, EGA, and Tandy graphics use digital TTL signals for R, G, B, and intensity, so 4 bits of information, leading to a maximum of 16 possible …

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Analog composite video output on PCs - how do 70 Hz modes even work?

Posted on 2020-07-29, 20:40

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I've had laptops and desktops with composite video output over the years, but I have none of them anymore. I seem to remember text mode, as well as various DOS games, working fine on these video cards with TV out. Yet, weren't these running at 70 Hz, not 60 or 59.94? How did that even work? Did the …

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Re: Were CD-ROMs common on 386 computers?

Posted on 2020-07-24, 15:07

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

But I'm curious, were CD-ROMs common on 386 machines back in the day? What kind of applications or games were CD-ROM based at that time and actually benefitted from CD-ROM? No, not common. CD-ROM drives in PCs were not common until killer apps like Myst (released for PC in 1994) came out. By 1994, …

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Re: Two Win95 installations on one! partition

Posted on 2020-07-24, 14:51

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

2) get an IDE-CF adapter and switch between two CF cards. There are those that use an external 3.5 inch drive bay, so again, easily accessible. This would be so much easier. I think OP wants to share applications between the two installations, but since Win32 apps put so much configuration into the …

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Re: The comprehensive list of all modern reproductions of vintage sound cards

Posted on 2020-07-23, 16:57

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by LightStruk

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Added both versions of the Resound 2 (ISA and MCA) to the list; only had the original Resound OPL3 there before.

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Re: Espejo (x86 emulator)

Posted on 2020-07-15, 19:01

by

by LightStruk

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Speaking as someone who has written an emulator, kudos on making an emulator of a complicated machine that actually runs some real software. Are you using Nuked OPL3 for your Adlib emulation? Nuked is the gold standard for accuracy. Does your MPU-401 implementation just pass the MIDI along to the …

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Re: Using JB Weld as thermal epoxy?

Posted on 2020-07-15, 18:31

by

by LightStruk

in Milliways

in Milliways

Linus Tech Tips tried a thermal epoxy, and it was worse than even a graphite thermal pad.

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Re: The comprehensive list of all modern reproductions of vintage sound cards

Posted on 2020-06-04, 00:30

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Added Yeo Kheng Meng's pcb-covox-amp. He made it in the course of trying to make Windows 3.11 work well on a modern laptop.

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Re: PCI Riser Card capacitors - required on all thin clients?

Posted on 2020-05-30, 01:28

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

will1384, do you have the 1 GHz model or the 800 MHz model? I have the 800 MHz model. The most obvious difference visually between mine and yours is that mine lacks the DVI port. Otherwise our setups are very similar, including replacing the original flash storage with an SD IDE adapter!

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Re: PCI Riser Card capacitors - required on all thin clients?

Posted on 2020-05-29, 18:05

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I wonder if its the sound cards that make the difference, I have a Sound Blaster Live 5.1 and a AOPEN AW744L that I could try, I had problems with both sound cards on other computers however, the Sound Blaster Live 5.1 is a DELL card and the drivers can be a bit hard to setup, and the AOPEN AW744L …

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Re: PCI Riser Card capacitors - required on all thin clients?

Posted on 2020-05-29, 16:18

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I have a Neoware CA10 and it did not come with a riser card, I had to buy a cheap one on eBay, I got a "PCI Riser Card 1U 32bit REVERSE DIRECTION" and it has no place for capacitors or any thing else and "seems" to work just fine with the sound card I am using, I am using a ESS sound card Nice to …

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Re: PCI Riser Card capacitors - required on all thin clients?

Posted on 2020-05-29, 14:45

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Thinclient may have a PSU that only puts out +12V, +5V and +3.3V but not the -12V which is only ever used by COM ports and some sound cards. One inductor leg going to ground and diode cathode going to the other leg strongly suggests the SMPS is wired to inverting configuration, in a positive …

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Re: New sound card project: AWE64 Legacy

Posted on 2020-05-27, 04:29

by

by LightStruk

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

It's very difficult to exactly describe FPGA and I've yet to hear anyone come out with a brilliant definition. If you call it emulation you don't do it justice, and if you call it real hardware you may be kind of right in spirit... but absolutely incorrect :) I have a MiSTer and people have asked …

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